Applied Linguistics and Language Teacher Education by Nat Bartels

156 RELEVANCE OF KNOWLEDGE OF SLAAPPENDIXIssueInstructor ’s viewParticipant ’s viewWhat is SLA for?Much of the work in SLA iscontinuing to document what peopledo when they were learninglanguages... and trying to make senseof data before coming to a coherenttheory.I want to know what researchers knowabout SLA... and I wonder if it would behelpful for me to my teaching.For whom is SLA?Both researchers and teachersI think actually this course is ... forresearchers but not for future teachers.What kind of research doSLA researchers do?Is teaching SLAresearchers’ first priority?They are testing linguistics theory,psycholinguistics, that kind of thing.Some people do but you don’t have tobe in the classroom at all to do thiskind of research. You can do whatthese lab things people are doing. Thatcounts as SLA research.A pedagogical researcher has one ofthe major intentions to find out whatthings happen in the classroom both interms of what teachers do and whatlearners do whereas SLA doesn’t. Itsmajor interest is not classroomapplication. It really isn’t.They look at grammar and phonology.They separate things into pieces and tryto look at language from differentperspectives. They focus more ontheory... All the research is under somekind of conditions. I think theresearchers control those factors.Sometimes linguists just want to knowhow [learners] acquire a language but Idon’t think their concerns are how we[teachers] can use such knowledge toteach kids. Why do I bother to knowsuch [a] thing? I don’t think it’s veryrelated to language teaching.What is the perceivedrelationship between SLAresearchers and teachers?Ideally, researchers would also beteaching a language and also doingresearch. The university sets things upso that it gets kind of separated.[Ideally], 1 think researchers are [a] kindof helper for teachers. Researchersshould provide more information aboutteaching and learning to teachers.Those [SLA] researchers are examiningthe result of teachers’ teaching. It’s not... the kind of research that will helpteachers teach better. For me [SLA]researchers are more like examiners.